


Chase After Me

by thimble



Series: SASO 2017 [12]
Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Rakugo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 00:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12265113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: "You're never going to be normal, Haru." Rin sees the hurt on his face too late, but he's just in time to catch Haru by the wrist when he stands to walk away. Rin smiles at him, apologetic and sincere, like he isn't just saying it to make Haru like him again."You're going to be great."[An AU ofShouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu.]





	Chase After Me

**Author's Note:**

> written for [this](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/21931.html?thread=11275947#cmt11275947) prompt.

His life, Haru thinks, is decided for him too early. Barely ten years old and his leg decides to give out, rendering him unfit to work as most men will work when they're older. He doesn't blame his parents for being at a loss for what to do with him, just as he doesn't blame them for not watching him close enough to prevent the accident, the way he's heard other adults do. It was his fault—for not being careful, for being weak—and he intends to bear his burden quietly, if bitterly, because he's young and he hasn't quite perfected suffering in silence just yet.   
  
The other apprentice at Master's place, even less so. He lingers around Haru, a pest Haru can't simply swat from his arm and be done with. He talks too loud, asks too many questions. Smiles at Haru too much, as if there is anything to smile about.   
  
"If you don't smile," says Rin, because he had insisted on introducing himself, "nobody would want to listen to you." It's an ominous thing to say, from a child to another child, and Rin seems to realize this, amending with a scratch at his nape, "I like that about you though! It makes me want to try harder!"  
  
Haru doesn't want him to try. Haru wants to be left alone, practicing something he will never be good at to himself until it's time to lay down and croak.  
  


* * *

  
  
Rin wins out, in the end. He blazes through pieces at a faster rate, he charms the audience by sheer virtue of being himself, and, most of all, he makes Haru open up.   
  
"I'm doing this for my family," says Rin, his expression unusually serious. "I want to take care of them in my old man's place." The question goes unasked— _why do you do it, Haru?_ —but Haru still finds himself answering,   
  
"I want to be normal." Because to him, this is the only way he can do it, the only path that fate had laid out for him. Rin laughs, maybe a little too honestly.   
  
"You're never going to be normal, Haru." Rin sees the hurt on his face too late, but he's just in time to catch Haru by the wrist when he stands to walk away.   
  
Rin smiles at him, apologetic and sincere, like he isn't just saying it to make Haru like him again.   
  
"You're going to be great."  
  


* * *

  
  
They become futatsume together, and Haru isn't mistaken when he believes he wouldn't have done it without Rin. He says as much, matter-of-fact, as Rin blushes, all the while pretending he isn't.  
  
"You got here because you worked hard, idiot."   
  
Master takes them to a hot spring to celebrate, just the three of them, but heads back inside first, so that it's just him and Rin and the steam. Haru is still learning to read a room, but he doesn't need mastery in the art to realize that Rin is avoiding his eyes.   
  
"Why aren't you looking at me? Look at me, Rin."  
  
He gets more than Rin looking at him. He gets Rin, bypassing the distance and the water and the steam, leaning over to press his mouth to his. When he pulls back, his blush from earlier is back on full blast.  
  
"Don't say stuff like that to people if you don't want them stealing kisses from you, Haru."   
  
Haru licks his bottom lip; it tastes like nothing, and nothing at all like Rin. "What if I want them to?"   
  
"Huh?"  
  
"What if I want them to?" repeats Haru. Rin's eyes go laughably wide, and he looks so innocent like that that this time, it's Haru who's leaning in, smiling, and stealing a kiss.  
  


* * *

  
  
Rin's life, Haru thinks, is ended for him too early.  _An accident,_  say the whispers around him.  _Like the one that took his father. So young, too. Poor thing._  
  
Haru wonders if this is his fault too; if by burning too brightly than he was meant to, he was taking flames from Rin's candle, blowing it out too soon.  
  


* * *

  
  
"It's you," says Haru, older than he ever should've been, happier than he had any right to be. He was in the middle of performing  _Shinigami_ , alone in a theater set for demolition, and then he wasn't so alone anymore. Rin is there, in the audience, grin as blinding as it had ever been, teeth just a little bit sharper.   
  
"What happened to your smile, Haru?" asks Rin, suddenly beside him with an arm draped around his shoulder. Impossible to swat away, as always. "Didn't I tell you nobody would listen to someone so serious?"   
  
"Take me with you," says Haru. He understands now—he wasn't meant to die with rakugo, and so it will outlive him.  
  
But he  _was_  meant to die with Rin, even if it wasn't until half a century later. Rin only laughs at him, pressing his forehead to Haru's.   
  
"I'm leaving no matter what," says Rin, their lips touching as he speaks. "So it's all about whether or not you can catch up."  
  
_I can_ , thinks Haru, as he feels heat from the tipped candle spread, as feels his lungs swell with smoke. This time, he's the one holding onto Rin's wrist, reluctant to let him go a second time.   
  
_I can, if you're the one in front of me._


End file.
